I use strict 20 buy in bank roll management

Thought I would make a thread to track my progress, updating whenever I move up to the next stake (so won't be very often). I'll update with graphs and maybe stats

First I started at 5nl, didn't do too great. After nearly 50k hands I was at -1.23 EV bb/100. I also tried 4k hands at 10nl and did horribly. I was playing a little too loose and passive preflop (I was 26 VPIP/ 18 PFR for most of it). I dropped down to 2nl and tightened up to roughly a 20/17 playstyle and kept learning.

After nearly 70k hands of 2nl, the imgur links below are my graphs and stats summary. My VPIP/PFR are skewed slightly upwards from my early time with my looser play style.

https://imgur.com/a/ny6W3vj

I've already played one session of 5nl where I gained over 3 buyins. So my ev bb/100 for that stake is now -0.64

https://imgur.com/a/JdMsrJJ


I hope to be at 10nl within 3 months. I try to average no less than 5000 hands a week as of right now, with a full time job as a data analyst and girlfriend

I did very well at 5nl. It's been 5 weeks now since my last update, and I'm ready to move up to 10nl. Statistics below. I've made over 20 buy ins EV, ran a few buyins below EV. Yellow line is green line + rakeback if you didn't know. The rake, net of rakeback at 5nl on acr for my playstyle is just under 5bb/100.

Right after my last update, I bought an upswing lab subscription and have been studying that. My volume has dropped slightly as I have been spending more time studying. I still managed to hit approximately 1k hands a day over this time period.

I lost 6 buy ins initially at 5nl and probably should have moved down but felt I was just running bad and playing well. Sure enough I rebounded and haven't looked back.

Winning these stakes is really all about playing tight and letting villains spaz off in 3 and 4 bet pots. They will believe you much less than they should and will jam vs tiny 1/3 pot sized bets. I cbet very little since most players here are calling stations. I think my low standard deviation per 100 hands (76.12) is a sign of my conservative playstyle.


I suspect 10nl will be much more difficult and do not expect my first shot at it to be a success. I expect to be able to use a more aggressive playstyle there. My bankroll is at $208 right now, and if I drop below $170 I will move back down.


It will probably be a several months until I hopefully beat 10nl and am ready to move up to 25nl and post an update here again. I need to win 30 buy ins at 10nl, and expect it to be much more difficult than 5nl on ACR. I also am considering taking an intense summer course at University (in addition to working full time) over 5 weeks late May - end of June. I will be playing little to no poker in that time.
I also may play more live on weekends in the coming weeks/months. We'll see.


I'm also curious if anyone else has the experience of transitioning from online to 2/5 live. If I can beat 10nl on ACR will I be fine comfortably beating 2/5 live (say for $20 an hour or more)?


I may update this thread before I finish 10nl (at some sort of half way point) but we'll see.


Here's overall statistics so far this year. According to Primedope's poker variance calculator there's only a 2.58% chance I'm in reality a losing player




Positional statistics for this year:





Graph of 5nl since my last update:





Graph with showdown winnings:





Graph and table statistics of everything since I first started playing online poker in last August (statistics above graph):

Well, only 412 hands and I've already lost 4 buy ins at 10nl. Back down to 5nl for now. Ran like ****. third nut flush vs nut flush, AA vs AK, a few medium sized pots where guys rivered outs, and ran my combo draw into two pair in a 3bet pot and didn't hit my outs

I tried two shots at 10nl several months ago and every time I've taken a shot I've ran like trash. I'm -10 buy ins over 4483 hands at 10nl now between all my shots at that stake (-22 ev bb/100)

OK, it's been one week since my last post after my very brief shot at 10nl failed. I've won back 7 buyins and now have just over $200 in my account so I can take shot #2 at 10nl tomorrow. Really excited for it. I also got a $5000 raise at work today so I'm pretty happy today in general


I actually think I'll try only playing 2 tables to start off rather than my usual 4, for maybe the first week or so, and really start to think through each hand according to the upswing strategy, which I have been applying, however not as precisely as I could be if I had more time to make decisions. I really don't want to have to move down again.

I've won my 8 buyins mostly by running hot in all in situations, as you can see below. Just under 7000 hands over the last week, ran at a little over 3 ev bb/100 over this sample.

I play these stakes on ACR. I just subscribed to this thread, interested how you progress. Good luck and see you at the tables.

The lower the limit the worse the players. Nobody wants to play for $2 when they can play for $200. Worse players make more mistakes. 2nl and 5nl are not very tough on ACR or any site I have played. My experience on ACR is that the lower the limit the more stations you see. Against multiple stations in a hand you are doomed post flop without good holdings. You will not fold many out so keep your triple barrels to hands you know to be solid at showdown. Sets, 2 pair, straights, and flushes. Use some pot control multiway on your TPTK hands, so you do not end up playing for stacks postflop with AJ etc. If you get a flush draw with an Ax hand do not run out the worse flush draws by betting it aggressively. These guys play lots of suited hands and stack off when they get any flush. Most of these guys are playing their cards and not yours. They cannot find the fold button, because they are invested. Take good notes on who wakes up with what. Some of these guys get super aggressive with their nut hands but will call down any 2 pair hands without ever raising.

Nice work. Following. GL!

14% 4 bet! With your 3 bet and 4 bet stats I would expect to see a better redline.

This is great advice and what I have learned recently. Just have to be patient and def. use pot control when you don't have the nuts. Awesome job jbull.

Sub'd to the channel. I hope you decide to post more often.. 5 weeks between a post is a long time. But either way GL!

But not pot controlling a pot when you have a thin value hand ahead of villains range and overbetting shoving river and getting snapped because you wouldn’t shove your thin value is where the big win rates are born.. Good luck

Yes I think my 4 bet and overall preflop strategy has been honed well over my 160k hands at these stakes. Very confident in my preflop play.

Also yes I am usually value heavy but I tailor my strategy to my opponents.

Also I will be updating this infrequently as you mentioned. I would prefer to just post "big" milestones rather than the "here's the session I played today" type content. If that means not posting for 6 months because I don't make progress so be it

My online bankroll stands at $541.39 right now. It's not too pretty and my volume hasn't been high (due to IRL things and playing live) but its done.

I will be taking a shot at 25nl starting today for the first time in my life, and will move back down if I lose 4 buy ins.

I've experimented a lot with loosening up and improved a lot over the course of this in general. I'm definitely way better in the last 10,000 hands of this sample than I was at the beginning.

I've also played a lot of live (mostly 1/2, about a dozen hours of 2/5, and ~30 hours of 1/3).

Results, since March 6th (the time of my last update) (imgur link to both below images: https://imgur.com/a/8TXfBAL):

Side Note: Either one of two things isn't happening. 1. HM2 is not calculating winnings properly, or 2. ACR's advertised rakeback of 27% is actually lower than 27%. Because my winnings + rakeback in reality, judging by my money balance on the site, is approximately $330, not $400.

Also, I tried the PT4 trial just for fun, and both by green line and orange line differ by hundreds of big blinds between PT4 and HM2. (PT4 says my results are much better than HM2)




Live results below. The Y axis is in big blinds and the x axis is in hours. Fortunately I am a data analyst by trade so I can do lots of stuff with this. If you're curious the exact dollar amount is $3620 and it's a little over $12 an hour. I ran bad at the small amount of 2/5 I played (down a little over $1000 at that stake)

A year and a half after my last post, I've moved up to 50nl. Not too long after my last post, I fell into a 38 buy in down swing that lasted just under 200,000 hands. Because my volume isn't ideal (I've played 245,448 hands in 524 days), that really set me back. A large chunk of my volume since my last update is at 10nl as you can see in the second graphic, because I failed 6 different shots at 25nl, and my massive downswing extended well into 10nl so there was a lot of rebuilding there. My winrates in that graphic are also fairly low as the downswing covered the large majority of the hands I've played since my last update.

My game has changed a ton over this time. I got a solver about 2 months after my last update and been improving significantly and steadily.

I have $1,580 in my bankroll right now, over 31 buy ins for 50nl. I think I want $4000 before I move up to 100nl. I'll provide my next update then. I imagine it will be some time, as I want to beat 50nl blitz on ACR, a fairly tough pool from what I've heard, not just 50nl fast fold on ignition.

My stats and graphs are below. All are filtered to results only after 9/2/2019 (my last update/post above) The 10nl fast fold hands are 10nl blitz on ACR, the 25nl regular tables are also ACR, the 25nl fast fold is 98% ignition, 2% ACR, and 50nl fast fold is a first failed shot at 50nl fast fold on ignition (I'm taking my 2nd shot now).





My red and blue lines:

Informative thread K.

It sounds like you have well paid employment, so how important is poker to you.
I'm guessing its the challenge that you get a kick out of more than the money won, although extra cash always comes in handy does it not.

I hope you keep progressing in the future and good luck.

Nice thread mate!

Which solver did you get? Are they fairly easy to learn how to use?

Was it the solver that helped you prgress from 10NL to 50NL?

thx for update

Simple postflop. I wouldnt exactly say they're easy to use but not too difficult either provided you know some game theory concepts to start

I like the challenge and the process of improving rather than just money

Kvnd took time out of his friday night to do some leak finding with me tonight and go over some things.

Top person and player!

Update: In limbo between stakes. I hit my $4000 goal mentioned in my February post, but opted not to transition to ACR but rather stay on Bovada. As there is no 100nl fast fold on ACR or Bovada, I had to jump straight to 200nlz there. The shot went horribly, as you can see below I lost over 8 buy ins there in 1200 hands, wiping out months of 50nl progress. However I still have over 20 buy ins for 100nl regular tables and am opting to stay there until I rebuild my roll for another 200nl shot. Once I've solidified myself at 200nlz I think I'll provide my next update.

But I crushed it at 50z, winning 48 buy ins there in under 50k hands since my last update and running at 7.32 all in adj bb/100. Extremely confident in my game. I've played low volume since February, but have been studying a decent amount and keep on getting better



Lifetime graph:

End of year update

Here's my 2021 online results. I have made $35,500 in live winnings over 502 hours this year as well (Full all time graph below is lifetime, started this year at $5000 in winnings). Goal for 2022 is +100 buy ins all in adj at 200nl+, reaching 500z, and over $50k in live winnings

My skill has increased incredibly over the last year. I hired a coach 2 months ago as well (CrabPwnage).





Here's my online results filtered to only after my last update (06-28):

I met one of my goals I described earlier for 2022: I've surpassed $50k in live cash game winnings for this year, despite the fact I haven't been able to put in as much volume as I would have liked due to irl things and graduate school. Here are my 2022 aggregate stats:



And here are my stats by stake going back to when I began playing poker as my sole source of income in late August 2021, so 9 and a half months ago. Again, hours played not as high as I would have liked due to irl things. Anyway, I'm putting in 35-40 hours a week consistently now



I started playing 5/10 almost exclusively starting in February. Before that was basically all 2/5. Some context for the above numbers: 2/5 was 10% rake up to $5 rake cap, 1k max buy in, fairly often straddled. The 5/10 game is $10 rake cap, $1500 max buy in, rarely straddles.

My second goal for 2022 I listed in my previous post was to win 100 buyins at 200nlz online and move up to 500, but I'm enjoying live so much and winning so much money there that does not seem appealing to me and I'm abandoning that goal for now. In fact, it seems counter productive. I find the most productive use of the time I do have at home is better spent studying poker rather than playing it online for almost certainly less than half the hourly of my live play. All my free time at home is spent doing solver work informed by MDA breaking down spots and trying to master them. I've only played maybe 5k hands online this year.

Lifetime live graph:



I'm not sure what my next update will be as I'm not sure where to go from here other than continue to grind live and improve, but there might be nothing to show for it I guess. There's no higher stake for me to move up to in my local area (5/10 is it basically for now in the north east, at least anywhere close by to me) and putting in serious volume online, the type of volume necessary to move up, is not appealing. Not complaining, being able to make $125k+/year playing poker is plenty for me.

Although I've reached close to my potential income cap from live poker in my area, I'm no where near my potential in terms of how much I can continue to improve at raw poker skill. Although I keep making progress here, it is much slower now that I play 40 hours a week + have irl commitments. I have much less time for studying and my rate of progression in terms of improving is far slower than when I focused on online.

Saw your recent post in winrates, saw someone mentioning you grinding online, and found this thread.

Wondering what your opinion is on ACR re: bots, collusion, cheating in general. Do you think of these issues as just one more thing you have to learn to deal with/adjust to playing online? Or are you just not seeing it much?

I've played PLO micros on ACR for a while, and have adjusted to the bots (eastern euro players exclusively it seems). The main problem I see with them is that they take money from the weaker players that could go to me (or other competent, legit players).

I also wonder sometimes if the non-EE players are using more sophisticated software than the bots, playing live with it to make decisions.